Rebirth
by BlezzedBee
Summary: He needs a hero. He needs an answer. He needs a kick in the ass. Luckily for him, the redhead with the angel on her back just might have all three.


**Part One:**

 **Tiny Soldier**

* * *

 **Chapter One:**

 **Nothing bleeds worse than a shallow wound**

* * *

The sand was gilded white by the caressing fall of moonlight which drifted over the world in a blanket of silver kisses. The waves, frothy and strong at high tide, rolled over the skin in a chilling slap. The world looked, to the untrained eye, like a sleeping sanctuary. It was a place where you went to find your peace, feel your power, and rest like a baby.

From where he sat, not far from the summer porch he had built with his own two hands, with his feet ankle deep in the coming tide, ex-police officer Leon Scott Kennedy could only admire the way the starless sky seemed to dance and twirl around the shining molten moon.

In his hand he held a high ball glass filled three fingers deep with Chevas Regal. The spill of flickering yellow from the porch light told him that Rebecca was still inside; packing. Rebecca was packing. This is how it ended for him, with Rebecca out of his life.

The low creak of the rusty hinges on the porch door indicated that she had left the house and was slowly crossing the sand toward where he sat. His skin had long since turned cold with the chill of Autumn faded grey RPD tee-shirt worn ragged at the shoulders and sporting a jagged hole on one side where once upon a time, one of Umbrella's freak creations had tried to spill his intestines on the ground. The jeans he sat in were so old that they clung to his body like a second skin; the seams starting to pull apart in some places and the hems little more than strings and swatches of ratty cloth.

Rebecca's feet came into view on his right side; those familiar brown boots that she was so fond of filling his peripheral vision like a bad omen. He waited silently until she had lowered herself into a crouch a little in-front and to one side of him, trying to get him to look at her.

"Well,"She said finally when he continued to stare at the inky darkness of the Pacific Ocean,"Thats the last of it."

As if it were the most unimportant thing in the world, he turned his gaze toward her. His gaze lingered, taking in her red turtleneck sweatshirt and khaki pants, the curl of her recently grown hair, just long enough now to grace the bottom of her chin. Her sea foam colored eyes studied him with a touch of sadness and a lot of pity.

"I'm not sure what's happening with you, Leon."She said softly and then shook her head because they had been having this same conversation for six months now. He couldn't remember the last time they had been in the same room without an argument beginning and one of them storming out, "But I still love you and-"

With something that was a cross between a laugh and a scoff, Leon rolled his eyes and looked up at the sky, "If you love me, Rebecca, than stay."

But she was already shaking her head and climbing to her feet, "I can't. You know I can't." She smoothed her hands down her hips, a nervous gesture that he had come to expect when they argued, "You've got shit you need to get in order. And me being here isn't helping you."

Leon said nothing, simply went back to staring out into the darkness. "What kinda shit?"

"Your drinking." She threw that at him like a bullet. "You're a drunk."

He laughed again, without humor, and gave her the finger.

Sometimes, she hated him. She'd done her level best to make this work. She had. He was impossible. If he wasn't drunk, he was so angry. The death of the president had nearly killed him, but the nail in the coffin had been his loss of his team in Washington. He was done. He was over it. He'd taken her to bed so broken, so used up, so fragile. She didn't know how to help him.

With a sigh, Rebecca leaned down and touched his hair, smoothing the dark auburn mass back from his high cheek boned, much too handsome face. His hair was slick with sweat and oily from days of being unwashed but he was still as striking, still as breathtakingly handsome as he had ever been. There was a faded white scar on his forehead that streaked jaggedly down over his left eyebrow, giving him the look of a warrior. Something low in Rebecca's body clenched while looking at him. Six months of fighting and anger hadn't changed how much her body wanted him.

She was reluctant to leave him here, sitting on the beach. She knew that Leon's father had sat on the beach the night his wife had left with his three year old son and then walked inside and swallowed a bullet. Leon liked to see this as his legacy, his destiny to follow in those bloody foot steps.

Rebecca liked to believe that Leon was made of stronger stuff but staring into those glassy blue eyes, she was still afraid for him.

She'd fallen into bed with him after Arias had been put into the ground. It was natural. It was a human response to pain and suffering. He'd been so handsome, so lost, so in need of love. Why not?

It was a mess. He was a mess. This? A mess. A big one. She hated messes. She was a fixer. She fixed messes.

She didn't love them.

So she said, "Get help, Leon. Please." She left that mess sitting in the sand, but she couldn't just walk away. She wasn't heartless. She was just tired.

In her Jeep, Rebecca Chambers dialed the phone calling the only person she could think of for help, "Claire?" The redhead listened on the other line, quietly, as Rebecca urged, "Hurry. I don't know what he'll do."

He listened until he heard the dull purr of her Jeep and the peel of her tires as she pulled away and then Leon Kennedy gained his feet, downed his Scotch and walked slowly up the rickety porch steps until he was standing in front of the glass coffee table in the living room. The three thousand dollar useless glass coffee table that Rebecca had insisted on getting.

Lying on the table was his father's Cougar Magnum, recently cleaned and sharing space with six rounds all standing up and saluting him. Leon picked up the beloved gun, spun the empty chamber and then loaded it with one live round. With a flick of his wrist, he snapped the chamber closed, cocked the hammer and sat down on the sofa, the Cougar cradled in his lap like a child.

Very slowly, Leon looked around his small beach side home and saw nothing that would even hint that a woman had lived with him for over a year. Rebecca had taken everything. There were no girly touches, no articles of female clothing, nothing left that had been hers.

Lifting the Magnum, Leon pressed the cold steel muzzle into his temple and closed his eyes, his finger hovering over the trigger. It was his right, to end it here and now. He had nothing to live for anymore.

He had seen the rise and fall of the corporate giant Umbrella Pharmaceuticals, had watched his friends fall in and out of love, had seen Raccoon City burned to ash and watched hordes of shambling monsters consume flesh and blood off his dying comrades. He'd buried anyone he'd ever cared about. He'd fucked up his life, his body, his chances of having children, getting married, or getting out. He'd spent a week of his life up to his balls in Ada Wong and found nothing worth the sacrifice.

He'd pushed aside the only woman who'd ever really been his friend and burned the bridge to her brother like a fool.

He'd shoved out the scientist who'd tried to love him.

He'd fried, fired, burnt down or blown up anything in his life that mattered. He had seen a lot. He had lived his life.

He clenched his eyes shut, unable to block the image of the William Birkin from his mind. The gangling monster that he had become, the giant deformed eye in his shoulder staring at him. The nightmares woke him constantly, night after night, blood and gore and the moment when the claws had bisected his chest and left his face forever marked.

Holding his eyes closed, Leon eased his finger down on the trigger.

In the distance, a sea gull screamed startled from it's slumber by the loud rapport of a fired gun. The waves licked at the sand, the moon shone brightly obliterating everything else.

In the spill of the silvery light, the white flash of light in the window of Leon Kennedy's home was lost to the wind, the night, and the eerie silence that followed that one ominous shot.


End file.
